iMovie crashes with eGPU connected

[mylittlepwny]

Does anyone else have issues running iMovie with an eGPU plugged in?

I have a 2018 15" MBP with 560x and a Sonnet 550 box with an MSI 580 in it. iMovie just crashes instantly if I have it plugged in, even if there is no monitor connected to the eGPU and I am trying to use the built in Macbook display. If I unplug the eGPU iMovie works just fine. I recently reinstalled a fresh downloaded copy of Catalina from a completely reformatted drive and it still crashes. Searching google for "iMovie crashes with egpu" just leads to generic and useless iMovie crash tutorials.

I can post the full crash report if anyone can make sense of it.

 

[xdfish289]

Same Problem with a Razer Core X and the AMD Vega 64.
I know the GPU isn't supported, but it works with other apps very well.
So it seems to be a general issue.

Is there another workaround than disconnecting the egpu?

 

[mylittlepwny]

I found that if I open iMovie and then plug in the egpu it won't crash and I can at least use my external monitor to edit. But I'm fairly certain that is just because it is not trying to run on the eGPU in that case.

 

[Bushidough]

I'm glad I found this thread. I'm having the exact same problem with almost the exact same gear: MBP 15" (2018), Razer Core eGPU, AMD Radeon Vega 64.

・iMovie crashes when the eGPU is plugged in before launching.
・iMovie does not crash if I unplug the eGPU before launching.
・If I start iMovie first and then plug the eGPU back in everything works fine, but I suspect that iMovie is not using the eGPU at all, which defeats the purpose.

I hope this gets resolved for the 0.01% of us who are working with this kind of set up. ☹️

 

[keem]

Hey I'm glad I found this thread, I have the same issue. I have a 2018 MBP 15", Razer Core X eGPU with the AMD Radeon Vega 64. I guess we have to wait for an update. Sooner rather than later hopefully.

 

[nekton1]

It would also be nice if Adobe would update the latest version of Premiere Pro to use the eGPU fully for rendering, or has anyone found a hack that tricks it into doing so?

 

[mfanti]

I have a 2019 MBP 15" and AMD Radeon RX 560. After 1 hour with iMovie support and 1 hour yesterday with regular support I decided to disconnect the eGPU and it fixed the problem. Apparently Apple support doesn't know about the issue.